Wolverhampton, gateway to the Black Country

Wolverhampton is the western gateway to the West Midlands and the Black Country, the industrial region named after the smoke of its furnaces and its outcropping coal. It has about 265,000 inhabitants, only became a city in 2000 and is known around the world above all for the Wolves, the football club that in the 1950s helped bring the European Cup into being. But Wolverhampton also has a thousand-year history, beginning with a Saxon noblewoman, an industrial tradition of locks, lacquerware, bicycles and record-breaking cars, and some of the most interesting houses in the Midlands nearby: the house where the future King Charles II hid and a mansion furnished with William Morris fabrics.

Trains from London Euston take under two hours, and central Birmingham is about twenty minutes away by train or half an hour by tram. Birmingham Airport is the closest.

Lady Wulfrun's town

The town's history begins in 985, when the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred granted land to a noblewoman named Wulfrun. A few years later she founded a monastery on the hill, and the village that grew around it took the name Wulfrun's heantun, "Wulfrun's high farm", which in time became Wolverhampton. A statue of the founder stands beside St Peter's Church, and the locals are still jokingly called Wulfrunians.

In the Middle Ages Wolverhampton was a wealthy wool town with a large market. From the 17th century, thanks to the coal and iron of the Black Country, it specialised in metalworking: locks and keys, buckles, tools and above all japanned goods, a glossy black lacquer technique imitating Japanese lacquerware, very fashionable for trays, boxes and furniture. In the 19th century came bicycle, motorcycle and car factories: the Sunbeam marque, which grew out of a japanning works, built in 1927 the first car to exceed 200 miles per hour. In the 20th century the town welcomed immigrants from the Caribbean and the Punjab: today it has one of the largest Sikh communities in the UK.

Wolves and the birth of European football

Wolverhampton Wanderers were founded in 1877 from the merger of a school team and a cricket club. Their golden age came in the 1950s, when under manager Stan Cullis they won three English league titles, in 1954, 1958 and 1959, captained by Billy Wright, the first footballer in the world to win a hundred caps for his country.

In those years Molineux, the club's ground, was one of the first in England to install floodlights, and Wolves staged a series of televised night-time friendlies against great foreign teams. On 13 December 1954 they beat Honvéd of Budapest 3-2, the team of Puskás and the great Hungary side. The English papers proclaimed Wolves "champions of the world", and Gabriel Hanot, editor of the French sports daily L'Équipe, replied that a real tournament between the champions of Europe was needed to settle it. From that debate the European Cup was born in 1955. Molineux, in the heart of the city, offers guided tours.

What to see in Wolverhampton

St Peter's and the centre

The collegiate church of St Peter, on the hill where Wulfrun founded her monastery, is the city's oldest monument: the present building is largely 15th-century, with a fine tower and a stone pulpit, but in the churchyard stands a fragment of a 9th-century Saxon cross, about four metres high, carved with animals and foliage. Around the church lies the centre, with Queen Square, the equestrian statue of Prince Albert and a number of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. The market and pedestrian streets are the city's commercial heart. Look up as you walk: many shopfronts still have their original upper floors, with terracotta, carved stone and the names of long-gone Victorian businesses, and the former Chubb lock works, now home to an independent cinema and media centre, recalls the industry that made the city's name famous worldwide.

The art gallery

Wolverhampton Art Gallery, in a Victorian building of 1884, is free and has one of the best Pop Art collections in the UK, with works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and British pop artists, alongside Georgian and Victorian paintings. It also holds a collection of art related to the Northern Ireland conflict, rare in an English museum.

Bantock House and West Park

Bantock House, an Edwardian-style house set in a park, is now a museum telling the story of the city and its industries, with a rich collection of japanned ware, Bilston enamels and locks. West Park, a few minutes from the centre, is one of the finest Victorian parks in the Midlands, with a lake, a conservatory and a bandstand.

The canals

Wolverhampton lies on the Birmingham Canal Navigations, built in the 18th century to carry coal and iron. North of the centre the flight of 21 locks drops more than thirty metres towards the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, a lovely walk or cycle ride among iron bridges, old factories and surprisingly green stretches.

Country houses nearby

Wightwick Manor

West of the city, Wightwick Manor is one of the most enchanting houses of Victorian England. Built between 1887 and 1893 for the Mander family, paint and ink manufacturers, it is in Tudor Revival style, with exposed timbers and carved fireplaces, but inside it is furnished with the wallpapers, textiles and furniture of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. It also holds one of the most important collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings outside a public museum, with works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Millais. The garden is equally lovely. It now belongs to the National Trust.

Moseley Old Hall and Boscobel

In September 1651, after defeat at the Battle of Worcester, the young King Charles II was fleeing Cromwell's troops. He hid first at Boscobel House, in Shropshire, where he spent a whole day hidden in the branches of an oak tree, the famous Royal Oak: a descendant of the tree still stands in the field near the house. Then he was taken in at Moseley Old Hall, north of Wolverhampton, an Elizabethan house where he slept in a four-poster bed and hid in a secret priest hole built for Catholic priests. Both houses can be visited and tell one of the most romantic adventures in English history. To this day many pubs are called the Royal Oak in memory of that tree.

Black Country Living Museum

About ten kilometres away, in Dudley, the Black Country Living Museum is one of the finest open-air museums in the UK: a whole industrial village rebuilt, with shops, houses, a school, a mine, forges, a cinema and a pub, brought to life by costumed characters. You can eat chips fried in dripping as they were a hundred years ago, and next to the museum you can take a boat trip into the canal tunnels and limestone caverns beneath the hill. The museum was used as a set for Peaky Blinders.

The Black Country, a region with its own identity

Wolverhampton is considered the unofficial capital of the Black Country, the area between the city and Birmingham that includes Dudley, Walsall, Sandwell and dozens of industrial towns. The name comes from the black smoke of thousands of furnaces, forges and mines, and from coal seams so close to the surface that they blackened the ground: legend has it that Queen Victoria, crossing the area by train, had the blinds drawn so as not to see the landscape. Today the region proudly asserts its identity: it has a flag, designed in 2012 by a schoolgirl, with forged chains recalling local industry, and a day of celebration, Black Country Day, on 14 July, the anniversary of the first Newcomen steam engine, set to work here in 1712.

People speak a very distinctive dialect, rich in old forms, which the rest of the country affectionately teases with the nickname yam yam. The food is distinctive too: faggots and peas, offal meatballs with mushy peas, and pork scratchings, crunchy pork rinds to nibble with beer, which originated here.

A day in Wolverhampton

A possible itinerary: in the morning walk up to St Peter's, with its Saxon cross, and visit the art gallery a few steps away. After lunch take the bus or a bike to Wightwick Manor, ideally arriving for the afternoon guided tours. On the way back, if there is a match, pass by Molineux, or walk along the canals to the flight of 21 locks. In the evening, a gig at the Wulfrun Hall or dinner in one of the city's Punjabi restaurants. Devote the next day to the Black Country Living Museum, which needs at least half a day.

Music, sport and famous names

Wolverhampton gave British rock Slade, the 1970s glam band of singer Noddy Holder, whose Christmas song Merry Xmas Everybody rings out in shops all over the country every December. The Civic Hall and Wulfrun Hall, in the centre, are popular concert venues. The city also has a racecourse, at Dunstall Park, the first in the country to hold racing under floodlights.

The city's recent history has also known difficult moments: in 1968 the local MP Enoch Powell made a speech against immigration that divided the country and cost him his place in the shadow cabinet. Today Wolverhampton is a multicultural city, with large Sikh temples, churches and mosques, and festivals such as Vaisakhi that fill the centre.

Living in Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton has some of the cheapest homes and rents in the West Midlands and fast links to Birmingham, where many people work. After the crisis in heavy industry, the economy is based on advanced manufacturing, especially for aerospace and cars, logistics, healthcare, services and the University of Wolverhampton, with tens of thousands of students. The centre is the focus of a large regeneration programme, with a new station and the tram extended to the railway station. Unemployment remains above the national average.

Getting there and getting around

• By train: Avanti West Coast trains from London Euston take about an hour and fifty minutes; Birmingham New Street is about 20 minutes away, Manchester about an hour and a quarter. The station is a few minutes' walk from the centre.
• By tram: the West Midlands Metro links Wolverhampton with central Birmingham through the Black Country.
• By air: Birmingham Airport is about 40 minutes away by train.
• Around the city: Wightwick Manor can be reached by bus or bike; for Moseley Old Hall and Boscobel a car is almost essential; the Black Country Living Museum is served by buses.

For travel around the rest of the country see trains and transport, and for other cities British cities.

Tips for your visit

• How long: half a day for the centre and the art gallery, half a day for Wightwick Manor; a day for the Black Country Living Museum and another for Charles II's hiding places.
• When to go: spring and summer for the gardens and country houses, which often close or reduce their hours in winter; a match-day Saturday for the atmosphere at Molineux.
• Don't miss: the story of Charles II's escape, told by the guides at Moseley Old Hall in front of the secret hiding place.
• An itinerary: combine Wolverhampton with Birmingham and the Black Country for two or three days devoted to the industrial history of the Midlands.

Wolverhampton on the map

Nearby